Transcribe Audio Cheaply Without a Plan

Turn meetings, calls, and videos into text with Deepgram pay-per-request — no transcription subscription for occasional audio.

How do I transcribe audio without a subscription?

Short answer: send audio to Deepgram through Locus and pay per request from one balance. Transcription plans charge monthly minimums even when you process a handful of files. If you transcribe a few meetings, interviews, or videos a month, paying per minute processed costs a fraction of a plan.

What transcription can I get pay-per-use?

Speech to text

Convert recordings, calls, and videos into accurate transcripts with speaker detection and timestamps.

Meeting intelligence

Summarize discussions, extract action items, and detect topics by piping transcripts into an LLM step.

Media pipelines

Generate subtitles, searchable archives, and content repurposing from video and podcast audio.

A cheap meeting-notes workflow

•Transcribe — Send the recording to Deepgram for a timestamped transcript with speaker labels.
•Summarize — Pass the transcript to a Claude or GPT model for notes, decisions, and action items.
•Speak it back — Optionally narrate the summary with ElevenLabs — all three steps from the same balance.
•Pay per minute — Occasional use means occasional cost. A quiet month with no recordings costs nothing.

When a transcription plan wins

Teams transcribing hundreds of hours monthly — call centers, media archives, research operations — should compare per-minute totals against an annual transcription plan. Everyone else, from founders recording customer calls to creators subtitling videos, pays less per request.

Related resources

Frequently asked questions

How do I transcribe a meeting without a subscription?

Send the recording to Deepgram through Locus and pay per minute processed — a few meetings a month costs a fraction of any plan.

Can I get meeting notes automatically?

Yes. Transcribe with Deepgram for a timestamped transcript, summarize with an LLM step, and optionally narrate the summary with ElevenLabs.

What kinds of audio can be transcribed?

Meetings, calls, interviews, videos, and podcasts — with speaker labels and timestamps for navigation.

Transcribe audio pay-per-use View voice endpoints